The Will

You go on a diet. In fact, it’s diet number 682 if anyone is counting. Deep breath…one more time. I read about someone once who was recording what she ate and her thoughts, feelings and intentions which were stellar in the morning as she ate half a rice cake, plain and for her morning snack…four bean sprouts. Of course by nightfall she was face down in a half gallon of Rocky Road ice cream.

But this time, you’ve researched your plan and are confident that if you are strong for three days, you’ll be on auto pilot by day four.

I love food…love the way it looks, tastes, feels, smells but it never dominates my thoughts unless I try to eliminate certain foods. I become focused on what I cannot have, how I need it, how I can rationalize getting it.

I’m skinny but take medication for cholesterol. One reason for this is my daddy’s genes. The other reason is what I eat…who’s to say how much of either.

A friend is on a diet because she is overweight. Her weight shows, my cholesterol numbers do not. To look nice or just be healthy, we should both have the same motivation, right? Overweight or skinny, high cholesterol or normal numbers, does it matter how I eat?

If her husband was Bill Gates and my husband worked minimum wage for McDonalds, would it not matter how she spent her money because the sky is the limit but matter how I spent mine because I had so little to spend? What’s the motivation for how we spend our money?

I was reading The Secret of Spiritual Strength by Andrew Murray. He says, “Christ calls me to love nothing more than I love Him….to lose my life, to disallow what gives life its own value, to disclaim what I am in my own person…to deny myself.”

Love Him more than bread? Chocolate? Of course you do until one day you give up bread or chocolate and a few days later you’re standing there wondering, “Holy cow…do I actually love this stuff more than Him?”

Let’s say you decide to lose weight not because you want to be a pre first grade size 6 but for noble reasons…your health…the same reason you’re addressing your cholesterol. If you’re faced with a choice, bacon or sausage, you move on to the next item. Why? Because bacon is loaded with not only great taste but fat, cholesterol and sodium. But is that my primary motivation…denying myself only because of the content and what it does to my thighs and my liver?

Partly yes. But I don’t think that carries you through the Rocky Road hours of the day. Sure doesn’t me.

My primary motivation should be to do His will. I should be convinced this is His will first and foremost…whether it’s to lose 50 pounds, buy a dress, pull weeds, take a friend to lunch, work in the nursery once a month, stay home, go on a trip. A decision about my body shouldn’t be any different from any other decision should it? Funny how some things, we never ask. Or ask in a nebulous way.

And if I’m convinced He is telling me to do something versus me just arbitrarily making a decision to do it, doesn’t that change the dynamic? Now He’s involved. He’s coaching as well as providing the power…to do whatever He asks me to do.

I've never wanted a personal trainer because I don’t want them telling me what to do, or telling me at 6 a.m. after I’ve been up half the night with a sick kid, or if I’m bloated … or what if I don’t like what they’re telling me. What if I just don’t feel like doing it today. What if it hurts?

That’s what a coach does.

I rise early, read, pray. It’s quiet. I sit in solitude. Ten seconds later (it seems) the kids wake up.

I shower, dress, leave for work or I get the kids off and settle in to work. I ate breakfast so I’m good until about 10 a.m. I’ve planned … but the 100 calorie snack which looked enormous at 6 a.m. has shrunk to the size of a postage stamp. I could inhale once, a very shallow inhalation I might add, and it would be consumed. I’m alone in my kitchen or the snack room at work. My stomach is in a knot. I think of people in Africa … entire families probably subsisting on one cup of rice a day. I feel horrible about that but it does nothing for the emptiness in the pit of my stomach, still there, growing.

I’m not alone. There is a Presence. But like Peter, do I stare at the waves threatening to overtake me, totally focused on the raging sea? Or do I turn my attention elsewhere?

I usually focus on the raging sea…giving in to reason… “if I just eat one piece…” Then four pieces later…. Or, “If I don’t buy another thing this month….”, “if I phrase this as a prayer request…”. But when Peter focused on the Presence, when he cried out to the Presence, everything changed.

Cholesterol or weight, buy it or leave the card in your wallet, say it or remain silent, you grip the counter.

At this point, I’m usually mute. I have no idea why this shuts me up, but it does. It should unleash all kinds of feelings within. And it should because I’m not standing there by myself…I have Someone there with whom I can vent, whine and listen to. You think all those football players running stadiums race back to the field and smile at the coach? “Thanks for the opportunity to stare death in the face, Coach?” Sometimes it’s hard. They gripe. But the coach doesn’t go home until his players do. And this Coach goes home with us.

Again from Murray…”Why is it so difficult to be obedient, and why do we sin so often? … Where does this disobedience come from? They are disobedient because they are trying to obey a distant Christ, and therefore his commands do not come to them with power.”

“When God wanted to send any man to do His will, He met with him and talked with him and encouraged him, time after time. … Why are we not obedient? It is because we have so little of this close communion with Jesus.”

Communion is close association, relationship. Means you talk. You change your focus, state your feelings, your desire to be obedient to what He has told you to do. Talk then listen. Obey.

We’re all reactionary. Lab work comes back with a cholesterol of 300 and we’re on water and fruit by nightfall, shooting from the hip. Makes a big difference though if I just thought that was a good idea or I was told what to do, doesn’t it.

Wait to be told.

To do that, you have to be in close communion.

Remember that this Coach has years of experience with all kinds of people. He knows what works best with a personality like yours, a body like yours, an environment like yours, a background like yours. He knows how far you can stretch and not break…what will make you strong, what will encourage you and satisfy your heart and your stomach.

He has a goal in mind and it might not be a size 6. It will proably involve far more than normal cholesterol numbers or a balanced budget. He is interested in the total you.

And years later, looking back, even though it was so hard, you'd recommend Him any day and twice on Sunday.